Mendel's Dwarf

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by Simon Mawer


  MATERNITY

  And meanwhile, what do I do? I wait. Benedict the brave waits trembling with excitement amid the soft and sensuous beds of molecular biology, amid the machines that whisper truths about the human condition for which the Bard could only write ditties. Benedict waits for he knows not what, and while he is waiting he picks delicately through the human genome like God picking through the mind of a soul in purgatory.

  “Terrible about your library lady, isn’t it?” Olga says as, with her arms embracing a Perspex shield, she prepares a radioactive probe. “Have you been to see her, Ben?”

  My reply is vague; but my thoughts are focused. In my thoughts I am, as always, the protagonist: Hugo Miller will deny his interest in the child and I will step in to stop the adoption order, claiming right of custody. A DNA analysis will establish my paternity. Adam will be mine; and in a sense, even lying comatose in her hospital bed, even kept alive by intravenous drip, Jean will be mine. I will have won.

  Something like that.

  A hushed and somnolent corridor. MRS. JEAN MILLER. NO VISITORS PLEASE.

  Jean lies softly on her bed, dreaming of the future. The baby sleeps, with nothing to dream of. At the opening of the door a nurse looks around from a trolley of bottles and sees Hugo Miller standing in the doorway brandishing a tape recorder. “I thought perhaps some of her favorite music … Doctor Lupron suggested …”

  The nurse smiles compliance. “Why not?”

  “It’s one of those Eastern European composers. She often used to listen to it.” He sets the machine down on the table near Jean’s head, and plugs it in. Quite soon a disembodied piano begins to play, a painful, nostalgic sound filtering into the still air of the room; the nurse pauses from her work to listen for a moment. “That’s lovely,” she says. “I don’t go much for the classics myself, but I do like a good tune.” Then she goes back to her work with the brisk and practiced manner of an undertaker laying out a corpse, fiddling with machinery, changing the bottle on the drip, twitching at the sheet that lies over Jean’s body, glancing at the sleeping baby. Then she pauses with her hand on the door handle. “Lovely music, isn’t it? Sad, though. Who did you say it was?” But she doesn’t listen to the answer. “I won’t be gone long,” she says. “There’s the bell if you need anything.”

  Oh no, he doesn’t need anything. When she has gone he crosses the room and turns the latch on the door. Later they will ask about that latch. Why should there be such a thing on a hospital door? they will ask. And that will lead on to other queries. Was it all premeditated? Was it all planned? They will argue about it for days. Had the idea lain there in the back of his mind like a fish sliding beneath the still waters, a shark within the submarine tanks of the clinic? Had he thought it all out? What motive will they decide on? What will be the reason, the cause, the etiology? How will they explain it all away?

  Tell me, where is fancy bred.

  Or in the heart or in the head?

  It is engender’d in the eyes,

  With gazing fed; and fancy dies

  In the cradle where it lies.

  At ten o’clock I went into my office and phoned the clinic. I remember the time largely because I had been watching the hands on a wall clock in the lab, largely because I didn’t know what to do, and was wondering when to do it. So at ten o’clock I phoned the clinic.

  The glossy tones of the retail trade answered, “Hewison Fertility. Can I help you?” But when the receptionist heard who was calling, the tone changed from cheerful optimism. By now they all knew the stunted, the remarkable Benedict Lambert. By now they all understood that congenital disaster was going to stalk the hushed corridors of the clinic for as long as the Miller case remained unresolved. There was a brief burst of soothing music in my ear, and then another, more senior voice was there assuring me that Mrs. Miller was still quite comfortable. No, there wasn’t any change in her condition, but she was quite comfortable. The new voice used that word stable. “In fact, Mr. Miller has just this minute gone to see her. Would you like me to put you through to her room?”

  And it was only then that some kind of dim understanding broke through, perhaps like the first glimmer of doubt that crept into the mind of the obstetrician when she held me, proto-Benedict, bloodied and bowed, aloft between my mother’s splayed legs. “It’s a lovely little boy.” But doubt stirring deep down there among the cheerful optimism of birth—that those limbs were altogether too short, that head too swollen, the bridge of the nose too depressed—the merest, deepest flicker of disquiet, the faint concern that all was not right. “Yes,” I said to the woman on the telephone. “Yes, please put me through. Quickly …”

  He stood at the bedside, doubtless aware of the press of time, the urgency of the moment. The telephone burbled softly, but of course he didn’t answer it. Maybe it spurred him to act. He turned to the baby’s cot and peered down at the dark head, at the clasped eyes and the single, clenched fist, while the piano played On the Overgrown Path with a sudden arpeggio, then a thoughtful melody, then the arpeggio repeated once more—the cry of the barn owl, for the barn owl has not flown away; although it soon will. Hugo Miller set to work. From Mendel to the future: the tenuous chain of descent, the passage of DNA down the generations, was soon broken.

  I suppose that at that moment I was struggling out into the forecourt of the Institute. It was pouring with rain. Watch: a dwarf, panicking through puddles.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to acknowledge the help of Dr. Josef Jiricny of Zurich University and Patricia Novelli of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. They both gave much assistance with technical aspects of molecular biology. Any errors are, of course, the fault of Benedict Lambert.

  SIMON MAWER is the author of the national best sellers Trapeze and The Glass Room, which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Mendel’s Dwarf is an earlier novel that was named a New York Times Notable Book and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award when it was first published. Mawer’s other novels include The Fall (winner of the Boardman Tasker Prize) and The Gospel of Judas. English by birth, he has made Italy his home for more than thirty years. www.simonmawer.com

 

 

 


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